The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

How do you think art works in social and cultural life? Actually, ruangrupa is a space for art. The name starts with ‘ruang’, meaning room/space, and ‘rupa’, meaning ‘visual’, implies fluid meanings, so ‘ruangrupa’ (shortened to RuRu) opens a space for all. ruangrupa has been around for 12 years, so we’ve endured and grown to get this far. For ruangrupa, art is based on daily life in Jakarta, from small narrations to grand ones: we never try to do things we don’t know. Making socially and culturally engaged art doesn’t require academic or politically-correct research — even incorrect ways define social and cultural life. Most of the time, we do visual research — wandering around, experiencing and being inspired by the city, drifting. RuRu works through visual language. It’s not difficult to communicate, as the key is bringing up issues relating to the public, so people connect. If the issue isn’t interesting, or the context relevant, it’s a waste of time. No one would look. How we communicate is important: we explain things differently for various levels of society — like speaking to high school students or journalists. It’s also important to expand networking and collaborations with various media and different people. This is another way to create awareness and distribute ideas. Most important is sharing the same vision. In the beginning, everyone in RuRu was an artist and worked in many other fields, so they came with diverse networks; now it’s a collection of diverse disciplines, such as researchers, writers, activists, media producers and other professionals. RuRu is open 24 hours, like a Circle K [convenience store] or a McDonald’s, so people come and gather, including those with projects or agendas. ruangrupa is situated in a hardcore urban area and keeps developing, not only as a space for art/research, but where various forms of activism intersect, from the fixed-gear bicycle community to musicians, street artists, carpenters, human rights activists. This constantly expands ruangrupa’s ideas and knowledge. What connections do you see between rock musicians and artists? Because RuRu is a meeting place, a forum, a beehive, we have a lot of energy. We make art, video, film and music. We do it because it’s close to us and we enjoy it. Anything can happen. Anyone can become a visual artist: sometimes amateur DJs make exhibitions and videos/ films, but they also do gigs. RuRu is closely connected with the music scene and influences it, because the arts are interrelated. We do this for daily survival. That’s how we see art and music: they contribute to each other. Rock musicians and artists have similar purposes. They try to ‘shake’ the world. They also have a reputation in society as unique individuals, which allows them to say unusual, even provocative, things. Do you see parallels in political and musical subcultures during Suharto’s New Order, in Indonesia, and, in Queensland, during the Bjelke-Petersen period? Suharto and Bjelke-Petersen shared the same style of government. ‘Joh’ began to surface in 1968, the year Suharto became president. Both were the longest-serving men in their positions; Suharto was in charge for 30 years and Joh only 19, so Suharto was in much longer than Joh, sorry to say. But, they were the same in terms of corruption and the crisis of government legitimacy: that was why both became authoritarian, to strengthen that legitimacy. And corruption kept on happening — unstoppable, unavoidable. With music, anything can be done, including mocking authorities from the stage. After Suharto, it got more sensitive. You can be brought to court for saying something inconvenient, even if it has nothing to do with music. Which are your favourite rock bands from Indonesia and Australia? SLANK from Indonesia and INXS from Australia. We grew up with SLANK’s early 1990s songs — they represented our daily problems, our friendships and love affairs, our anger about our hypocritical society, and many things we couldn’t say. And INXS? It’s a cool name for a band, but AC/DC is still the best rock band from Aussie and Nick Cave is the True Rock Star — hehehe. You often work between fact and fiction. Is your APT7 work a tribute or a parody? Or a mixture of the two? In the late 1960s and 1970s, the Asia Pacific became a focus of Western economic and political power. That’s why we wanted to review the Indonesia–Australia relationship through 1960s and 1970s rock‘n’roll. Rock music reflects the era and the region, and our project shows how society reacts to political tendencies. It’s ruangrupa’s tribute and it’s also a parody. Yes, it’s a mixture, because it’s not always based on factual events or figures. At the same time, it’s also a provocation and intervention into history and collective memory. It will allow people to provoke, to question and even to (re)create their own memories. Interviewed by Julie Ewington, August 2012. ruangrupa An interview 190